What do you mean by SEO Web Design asked a new client of mine?

I had just been reviewing her site and noticed that the company who had previously designed it and it has to said, had created a visually eye-catching website, had however made some basic errors in their haste to please her.

To start from the beginning she had contacted me after she had come across one of my articles. It’s funny how life works though because, that in itself would not have prompted her to get in touch, but a friend of hers who I had been doing some SEO work for had got in touch with her after about 6 years.

And of course they got to discussing life and work etc; and to cut a long story short her friend recommended that she get in touch with me.

Now her frustration was that she should have had every ingredient for success. Her site was in a relatively niche market, competition wasn’t that high and yet after paying out a sizeable chunk of money on getting her website professionally designed, her site was nowhere to be found on Google.

So what could possibly be going wrong?

A Brief Background

There is an old saying in Internet Marketing that good designers make bad SEO experts. Why? You may well ask.

The truth is that in my experience of the last 10 years in online marketing, most of the designers that I have worked with and come across have sharpened their design skills on HTML, XHTML, Javascript and CSS.

A lot of them have been in the forefront of the web design industry leading the way in site design and architecture but therein lies the root problem of the story.

The online marketing industry moves at a frenetic pace. What was once a ‘de facto’ standard is now old hat and consigned to ‘wheely’ bin of Internet marketing.

Faced with the constant flux of new ideas and innovations, a good designer already inundated with back orders has little choice but to concentrate on pleasing the clients’ esoteric eye.

He/she may have picked up a few SEO tidbits along the way either in meeting rooms or from beleaguered colleagues rushing from one project to the next but very seldom do you come across a good designer who knows and understands the impact of SEO upon web design.

This is not meant to be a criticism nor is meant to decry the genuine efforts of the design community at large but merely to point out that it is quite difficult to serve two very demanding masters at the same time.

There are sadly many who miss the point altogether, tearing their proverbial hair out when faced with their client’s low keyword ranking despair and frustration.

The backdrop to this that millions of ‘would-be’ entrepreneurs join the Internet juggernaut on a daily basis in search of financial freedom. These aspiring businessmen and women are usually at their most vulnerable when first starting out.

Excited and eager to get started, they overlook the basic principles of marketing and are often taken in by smooth-talking salesmen flashing dollar signs in front their imaginative eyes.

“Get a website! You need a website! You must have a website! Put up a few pages and hey presto before you know it you will be the envy of all your friends and neighbours!” seems to be the common thread.

Getting back to my client, she looked at me fairly blankly when I said that SEO web design meant that the design of a website had more to do with following certain guidelines than how good it looked to her.

“But I thought that if a site was well designed that people would like it and buy from it” she exclaimed almost daring me to disagree with her.

Yes, I answered disarmingly and gently proceeded to point out that without visitors having a great looking website wouldn’t be doing her any favours at all.

SEO Web Design – The Basics

Which brings me neatly to the crux of this article i.e. SEO web design. So, let’s take a look at a simple layout in the first instance.

Say you have a header/logo at the top of the page followed by some descriptive text that says “Welcome to my web…., followed by some pictures and the left hand side contains a column with some navigation links in it etc, etc;

Now search engines like Google scan a web page from left to right beginning at the very top. And as in our example above since most websites have a left hand column containing navigation links, Google will automatically view the content of the links column before it gets to the body of your page.

There are simple methods to counter this and force Google to read your main body content first and this why it is very important to get SEO Web Design at the very start of the design phase.

Then there’s another critical factor that determines the ranking of your web pages and that is targeting the wrong keyword. Get that wrong initially and you can almost kiss goodbye to getting decent rankings.

Now how many designers know just these basic facts?

My client had started to see the picture. In her eagerness to get her business going she had gone to the first person that she had come across.

The company had a good portfolio of sites and more importantly for her the cost was roughly near the budget that she was looking for and so without further thought she decided to go for it.

2 years down the road and with just a handful of sales, she was very close to quitting.

Her dreams had given way to despair and far from being the envy of her friends and neighbors, she had even reached the point of not looking at nor caring about her site anymore.

The question is, was she too late to do anything about it?

When considering the current economic climate and soft insurance market, every agency and agent wants to generate the optimum number of qualified leads with the lowest possible marketing investment. There is always a tradeoff between insurance agency lead flow today versus long range marketing plans, branding and agency awareness campaigns for the future. Let’s review some of the web marketing options available and discuss the length of time necessary to generate leads for insurance agents, or at a minimum, how long it would take to complete the task. These are in a suggested order for a typical insurance agency web marketing initiative.

Insurance Agency Website:

This is the first and foremost task for every agent and agency. Today your website is your Main Street façade, the front store window which every prospect and client will view. Regardless of lead flow, it is of paramount importance that your website is up to date and professional. After all, would you want to enter a store with peeling paint, a cracked front window, a faded sign and a general look of neglect? It only takes 30 days to revitalize a website, top to bottom and a compelling website will start to pay dividends immediately.

Insurance Agency Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Now that your insurance agency website is current and compelling, we need to focus on SEO. Arguably, much of the on page optimization was already accomplished if your website was redesigned, although many agencies have found that web designers may not be conversant with SEO. Regardless, it’s time to ensure your insurance agency SEO is at an optimum level. This encompasses both on page and off page optimization initiatives and both are extremely important to your success. Insurance agency SEO projects can put your agency on Google page one in as little as 30 to 60 days, resulting in a dramatic improvement for web traffic and an increase in lead generation.

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to increase website traffic, showcase agency expertise and improve insurance agency SEO. It’s fast, easy and arguably fun to do. Blog entries can be short; even two or three relevant sentences will often suffice. Blogging can also be outsourced to an insurance marketing agency or a proficient copywriter. Blog topics can often become articles, published in online magazines or article directories. Blogs can be integrated into social media marketing programs, and lead generation can be tracked through website analytics programs (including Google Analytics which is a free solution). If done correctly and consistently, blogs can increase lead flow in as little as 60 days.

Electronic Publishing

Electronic publishing or epublishing offers insurance agencies another way to generate website traffic, inbound inquiries and establish a positive internet presence. These days, electronic publishing can be more beneficial to drive in profile prospects to an insurance agency website than social media marketing or bulk web lead purchases. Articles should be educationally oriented focusing on your area of expertise. For example, perhaps your agency is proficient in compliance, workers compensation or marine insurance. Articles on these topics showcase your expertise and will help drive traffic to your website. Electronic publishing can drive leads within 30 days. Articles are typically published within a week of submission.

Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr)

Social media marketing is interesting, fun and empowering. Every agency and agent should have a presence in the major social networks, and should join relevant prospect groups on LinkedIn. Integration between social media (linking your blog to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for example), improves speed and efficacy of your content. Video offers advantages for marketing through YouTube and other social networks, and of course, makes your agency website more interesting and “stickier”. It takes time to germinate leads from social media marketing. Assume at least three or four months of effort before you see a return. However, when combining and integrating social media marketing with some of the other lead generation tools mentioned here, your return can be much faster.

Insurance Agency eMarketing

Agencies who try to use email blasts to blast out offers for cheap insurance will be sadly disappointed in the results. However, agencies who leverage eMarketing to distribute quality newsletters, white papers or educational webinar series can find this a highly effective lead generation tool, one which can dramatically help lead gen in a soft market. Campaigns can yield results very quickly, though it takes time to map out a successful eMarketing and seminar strategy, and an agency should plan on a 90 day cycle.

Insurance Agency Web Seminars

Web seminars, when combined with a professional eMarketing initiative, can be one of the most effective, long term lead generation tools available to agencies, in a soft or hard insurance market. Web seminar series build tremendous credibility, internet presence and agency awareness, and when done correctly, can virtually eliminate cold calling while adding qualified leads to the agency pipeline. It takes some time to create a successful webinar series, often up to six months to build awareness and loyalty. That said, once an agency establishes credibility, their webinar series will continue to draw impressive numbers of prospects. Agencies should assume three to six months to build an effective web seminar program.

Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising can be an effective way for insurance agencies to increase website traffic and generate leads. Organic SEO is superior in that there are no ongoing click based fees. However, for specific agency marketing niches, including commercial insurance, benefits insurance and personal lines. Pay Per Click marketing campaigns can offer a beneficial boost to insurance agency lead generation. Other variations on this include Pay Per Inclusion and Pay Per Impression. An important note, these campaigns need to be monitored and measured closely, as some keyword clicks can cost $5 to $15 every time someone clicks on the advertisement.

Web Lead Bulk Purchases

There are many companies which drive insurance consumer traffic to their respective websites and then parse and bundle leads, ultimately selling these to agents in their respective target areas. For example, some of these companies drive life insurance prospects to their websites, collect information, then sell these prospects to insurance agents and agencies on a per lead or lead bundle price. This can be beneficial to drive activity into and insurance agency pipeline, however, these leads are often sold to multiple agents and brokers, resulting in a pool of agents competing for the same prospect, armed with the same information. These bulk lead purchases can drive activity into a pipeline within 30 days, though the downside is that the leads are a free for all, and your agency will be one of many calling on the same leads.

These web centric activities can help drive leads to an agency, even in a challenging soft market as we have today. Your agency should focus on areas in which you have expertise. For example, perhaps one of your agents or support specialists likes to write, you could have them work on blogging and electronic publishing. Or, you may have a principal who would like to create a prominent social networking presence. However, if you lack the internal expertise or bandwidth, you can outsource all or part of these activities to a competent insurance marketing agency.

Basically, there are only two major things that happen online, the buying and selling process, aside from establishing long-term relationships with customers. While many leave everything to chance, there is no taking chance when it comes to online selling. It means, some things are not being advertised to them. That’s SEO job not selling but optimizing the site in order to get customers notice you, to become no. 1 in yahoo, MSN and Google and earning bucks.

In addition, people cannot buy products which they do not see as available. A good web design websites can add attraction as well. With that, repeat business will be certain to flow and thus, provide continuity to the other end, especially the selling part. It is also important, not only to sell, but get the satisfaction of these buyers. A deeper understanding of the targets gives more feel for the customers because a seller would know what pleases them. A business, either online or land-based, must be specific on the people it wants to cater to.

Knowing who the customers are, would greatly help in making out which direction to take. A business, either online or land-based, must be specific on the importance of using good web marketing into your online business and see it grow in time. This is the key that unlocks the potential of realizing the sales targets of a company. A deeper understanding of the targets gives greater understanding of the needs of customers. This will in turn, greatly help in making out which direction to take. Almost everybody will agree on the people it wants to cater to. Use significant Web marketing strategy. Be independent in financial matters when you are clearly reaching your goals for sales and profit. Internet marketing will give you a success that you ever wanted.